


Gunslinger

by Le_purple



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Amputation, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Body Modification, Broken Bones, Character Study, Gen, Gore, Graphic Description, Insanity, Mental Disintegration, Mental Instability, Other, Self-Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:00:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29041278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_purple/pseuds/Le_purple
Summary: Engineer has two good hands and a blueprint.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	Gunslinger

Dell had been debating it for a while now.  
On one hand, it was a useful device, an indisputable upgrade, and much sturdier to boot.  
On the other hand, he would only be left with his other hand.

He had strong hands, deft and tactful, and good with his machines. They were the hands of an engineer, and he didn’t know if he was willing to part with one, even if it _was_ an upgrade.  
Of course he was on too many painkillers to care.

Cutting off his hand was something he had considered for a while, ever since he found his old pa’s blueprints, and he had practically made up his mind the moment he saw them. He had considered it for so long, always battling arguments back and forth in his head. ‘ _What if it went wrong_ ’ vs ‘ _I know I’ll get it right_ ’, ‘ _Skilled hands don’t just grow on trees_ ’ vs ‘ _This is something even better than flesh and bone_ ’.

He had already crafted the prosthetic months before, barely even tweaked from pa’s original design, as well as a little something extra on the side, some kind of skin coloured rubber mitten to cover it so he didn’t alarm any people not accustomed to the sight of a man missing parts. He just had to lose the part first is all.  
His recently sterilized electric saw glinted in the bright light of his workshop, his feet shuffling along the blue tarp he laid over his floor to keep it from staining. The smell of blood was a difficult one to purge.

Dell was a one-man operation, making sure everything was in its place to prevent any unfortunate mishaps, tourniquet clinging tight to his arm and every little precaution in place so he wouldn’t have to crawl to help.   
Of course the Medic would’ve been thrilled to do an experiment like this, but Dell was a man of science, and the Medic was a man of mania. He didn’t trust that the only thing that would’ve changed waking up from the operation would be his arm.  
It was no trouble for him though, an amputation was an easy feat, and it wasn’t his first rodeo proverbially speaking, he had already attached the australium life extension device to that old man, which made attaching some prosthetic seem like child’s play.

Dell squeezed his eyes shut behind his goggles, sucking in a breath before resting his arm against the cool metal of the table and pulling two straps tight over the appendage, one at the wrist and the other just below his elbow. They were a new addition to the table, quickly affixed so that he couldn’t pull his arm away mid-amputation out of reflex or fear, and would ensure a clean, even cut.

Once the straps were tightly binding his arm, Dell used his free hand to place a scrap of leather in between his teeth, a necessary precaution if he wanted to keep them relatively uncracked amidst the pressure. His finger moved to hover over the remote of the table saw, trying to relax his body into a sigh as he pushed it.

_20 seconds, it’d only take 20 seconds._

The saw moved slowly, it had to, too quick and it’d have the chance to be a hack job. The scream of the bladed wheel cut through his attempt to remain calm, and Dell almost wanted to pull away, muscles straining against the buckles pinning his arm to the table, but his struggle quickly died down when the blade was just a hair away.

He braced himself for the pain.

The saw bit into his flesh, the teeth of the blade bloodied almost instantly as it sliced away his skin. Dell hissed into the leather, the gnawing of the table saw breaking the dull fuzz that the painkillers provided as it split the flesh in two. He could feel the whirr of the machinery in his arm, a sickening sensation paired with the saw's descent into his bone, the pain just as plentiful as the blood that gushed over the table and pattered down onto the tarp. It hurt, despite the painkillers it hurt so much, the blade eating away at the bone and turning the mess into a reddish slush as bone dust and shards were washed away by the gushing blood. He felt like he was going to vomit as the blade met his tendons on its way through his bone; his fingers, which had previously alternated between being clamped into a fist and flexing outward, became numb and difficult to move, starting with his thumb and moving onwards, the teeth of the saw burning his muscles as it ripped further through the appendage.

It didn’t take too long until Dell’s groans turned into screams, spit foaming around the leather and tears pricking his eyes as a visceral, animal cry wracked his throat, exhausted as his arm trembled within the binds. He tried to move his fingers, but found that only his ring finger and pinkie were able to move as the tendons others had snapped gruesomely, a nauseating numbness in his hand and arm as the tendons pulled at nothing, a contrast to the continuing burning ache as the saw continued far into the bone and flesh and marrow and muscle. Dell almost considered jerking away, cracking the bone in two and tearing the skin away so he didn’t have to continue bearing the agony of the saw drilling through him, but he had only a few more inches to go, and it wasn’t worth ruining all of his progress just to cut it short.

At last, all control over his fingers broke away, breath dry and rugged in his throat as the saw finally met the end of bone and bit through flesh. He was surprised at how much it hurt to feel the side of the saw itself rub against his exposed insides, stinging his flesh and adding pressure to the bone in an unnatural and painful way, the saw grinding to a halt after it completed its journey.   
He dropped to his knees on the tarp, blood soaking into his already splattered overalls and arm twisting in the bind as he fought to catch his breath, sobs catching on his voice. Dell didn’t expect to feel so exhausted, so drained, nausea and fatigue hitting him like nothing before as his face grew pallid, like his body was falling. There was more blood than he anticipated, there’s always more blood than he anticipated, crawling off of the tarp onto the floor and reaching up to his wrist as he planted his hand down, feeling granules of bone through his glove like it was just sand at a beach.   
The smell was terrible.

Dell lifted his hand up from the tarp and shakily placed it on the workbench. It wasn’t quite over yet. He cursed at his remaining hand, shaky, weak, and imprecise as he grabbed the prosthetic and base.  
First he needed anaesthetic, _god_ he needed anaesthetic.

He grabbed a small plastic jar from the back of his desk, smart enough to know that needles in this state would just cause more problems. It was a numbing gel, and Dell made sure to liberally apply it to the surrounding flesh of his arm as well as the exposed flesh and bone, never mind the blood. It stung at first, the leather scrap finally dropping from his mouth as he let out a yelp at the gel on raw flesh, but after a few tingling seconds he let out a sweet sigh as the burning grew more faint, a distant nightmare that droned on quietly. His hand was still shaky, trembling and worthless in that state, but nevertheless still an asset he needed to finish the job.

The base was important, there was a reason he didn’t attach the prosthetic directly; if he wanted to change the prosthetic he would have to uninstall the cables and switch around the whole thing, but with the base in place he could attach and innovate whatever he wanted.

It was messy and grotesque, fishing out what was left of the tendons to clip to the metal cables. It took some odd flexing and twisting, the fingers absent but the muscles still there, and it took every last ounce of strength in his body not to vomit at the feeling of the clips attaching to the tendons and the way the plastic cable disappeared into his muscle and blood as he moved. Of course the cutting of the tendons was uneven with his squirming, Dell dropping the tendon for the ring finger a few times before he managed to attach the clip, slippery with blood. They were like worms, maggots, disgusting and soon to rot. He pulled at the cables when they were all attached, the odd feeling of the insides of his arms moved in a new and unnatural way by an outside force, pain echoing as far as his elbow. He took an alcohol wipe and wiped off his arm, stinging more than he would’ve liked as he mopped up blood from his inflamed skin before dropping it onto the bloody tarp. With the cables installed he pulled them through the base and slipped on the hook toppers, attaching the base to his bone and letting it clamp down on his skin, leaving a clean metal disk on the stub of his arm with small hooks attached to cables representing his fingers, which clicked loosely as he moved, pretty useless without any kind of tension.

Finally it was time for the prosthetic. His hands were still trembling, but that was much less of a problem with metal machinery being relatively free of blood. Dell would have to think of a more convenient method to attach and remove the prosthetic in the future, but for the meantime he pulled on the hook for each cable, attaching them to loops on the inside of the metal hand, which rested on the table. It was a relatively fiddly and awkward process what with only one hand, but after a few minutes he pulled the hand back before sliding it onto his arm, a sudden feeling of everything coming to place. He stretched his arm out and flexed his new fingers, getting used to the feeling of moving metal against metal and caves extending his tendons,, resonating through his arm. 

It felt alien, a sensation the human body wasn’t biologically accustomed to experience. The hand was much heavier than he expected-it _was_ metal after all-an odd weight clinging to his bones like he was carrying something. It was no trouble, he was strong, and could handle an extra pound. He brought it close to his face so he could see it better in his blood loss haze, joints shifting together with quiet metallic clicks, like playing with a gun. With his remaining hand he tapped at the little pressure gauge, smearing blood all over the glass with his shaking fingertips, watching the hand on the dial twitch slightly. For day-to-day usage the dial would all but be stagnant, nothing really causing it to move in any significant way, but when the little pull-cord dangling down was pulled, well that would make things _real_ interesting.

There was a loud whir like that of a motor, entire arm tensing up as if every bit of muscle and flesh was being pulled at once as suddenly the robotic hand twisted, spun, faster than anything he would ever willingly have so close to his body before. It was exhilarating, thrilling, something so dangerous now attached to him and under his power, his throat, hoarse from screaming, beginning to rumble with a chuckle, a guffaw as he suddenly plunged his hand into his workbench. The spinning metal broke through the wood like it was nothing, a loud crash joining the screaming whirring of his hand as the workbench fell in on itself into the bloody tarp, as if the room couldn’t get any messier. Blood and woodchips flew up into the air as he hunched over to keep punching at whatever was even in front of him at that point, spraying up at him and everything around him until he could barely see past the blood on his goggles, not that it all mattered what he was hitting as long as it wasn’t himself. He was weak, flesh and blood, nothing that could ever come close to doing anything like this without removing that flesh, and removing that blood!

Eventually the flesh and blood took over, body falling back until he sat on his knees in the wreckage, whirring beginning to cool down as the cord recoiled. His arm and everything else in his body ached, muscles burning and breath ragged in his lungs. Without the whirring of his hand all that could be heard was the wreckage settling; blood running on the floor, wood creaking and settling, and his own laughter, deep and weak, air catching on his throat as his aching chest forced out breaths.

This was going to be the start of something _great._

**Author's Note:**

> If I had a nickel every time I wrote a fic where someone cuts off their arm I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.


End file.
